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Letter to Prison - 02-08-06
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Dear Bill,
Hey buddy, I’m sorry it’s been a few days. I got fired last week and haven’t been able to make time to write. It wasn’t a big deal, really, inasmuch as they apparently were going to eliminate my position soon anyway. I didn’t know that going into it, but I overslept last Thursday and gave them all the ammo they needed to get rid of me before they went after my boss, who went on vacation the same day.
So now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just give up this experiment and head back to Texas. Dad gets biopsy results today on a growth on his ear, and his health is deteriorating a bit again anyway. I have wheels now in Texas and could just as easily do temp work down there as up here.
I honestly thought when I moved back up here that there was a chance of me and Matt getting back together. Now, not only do I see that as unlikely, I don’t want it myself at this point. I want to move on and put as much time and distance between me and this situation as possible. What I really, REALLY want to do with my life now and for the foreseeable future is work myself out of my debts.
Am I starting to resemble a human yo-yo?
I’m not in a bad mood, really. I figure I can do anything and go anywhere I want to once my debt is paid down and I have some savings. I don’t have any legal problems. I don’t have any relationship tying me down to any particular place. I’m a grown man. I have some sadness about this whole period of my life, but only because of how long I held on to it and muddied the waters as a result. But Lord, that is balanced out and then some by what will perhaps be some of the happiest moments I’ve yet tasted. That may also be part of the problem.
I can be a prisoner of my former happiness. I can engage in the euphoric recall of a past moment of bliss until I blot out everything else in my life. It’s no different than any other rush I’ve chased in my life. What is that about? I think it’s a spiritual thing in some sense. I reckon the same impulse has driven religious contemplatives and other addicts throughout history. In this instance, I just substituted love and affection, or the security of a relationship, where before I had placed the approval of my family or a boss, or the rush I got from a gram-shot of crystal in my arm or a fifth of whiskey in my gut and my brain. Whatever comes between me and what’s real eventually turns bad or gets removed. That’s as it should be. My difficulties only really arise when I try to hold on to those things when I should let them go. Whatever is in line with what’s real will always come back around, if only from time to time, or it won’t matter. It’s really all in how I position myself and my expectations.
I’ve spent a good deal of my life trying to perform the correct spiritual calculus in order to get God to jump through the hoops for me and give me a sustainable happiness that isn’t predicated on circumstances, or to give me the circumstances I demand upon which to predicate that happiness – that may be a better way of putting it. The thing is it’s really my job, and though I play hell with it, it’s a fairly simple task. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It may be one of the hardest things in the world for me to choose how I wish to feel and think, but it’s also perhaps the most important job any of us have, I suppose, and the most basic.
I miss my dog. I miss the independence of having my own wheels, even though for me that is a calculated risk so long as I am not continuously sober.
I miss having a job and resources of my own and paying my own bills. I didn’t realize how important that really was for me until I went back to work in December for a company that paid on time with checks that don’t bounce and takes taxes out and has at least some form of benefits. That is the first time I’ve had that circumstance in years and years. For the entire time I was in Minneapolis with Matt I was supporting the two of us on my gross income and not filing with the IRS and just accumulating more and more debt and stress with each paycheck. I minimized that in my mind at the time, because I had the compensation of life with him, which was a substantial compensation, truthfully. But as married life waned, the stress of my mounting debts began to outweigh the security I’d formerly found in the relationship. It had to end. It was just hard on me the way it ended. But it’s been a year. Get over it already.
I reached that spot in my head almost the moment I returned to work a couple of months ago. I was suddenly engaged again in doing something constructive, even if it was very incrementally accomplished for the moment. Some of the former feeling came back up over the weekend, and I just want to be away from it finally. I’m not willing to put myself into that mess again. I’ll do whatever I need to in order to get away from it once and for all. I was already starting to feel ridiculous when I came back last May for a month. I’ve drug it out now until there’s no point in even trying to explain the situation anymore. I just really, really, REALLY need to walk away quietly and soon and let it go. That’s not even sad anymore.
I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to do with myself circumstantially once I am out of debt and free of all this. I think about where I’d like to live, and I really just don’t know. I have an attachment to the farm, but I don’t think that’s something I can’t let go of. I think sometimes about moving to San Francisco and living there, but I’m not sure what drives that impulse. I feel the same way about New York City or Denver also. Austin is the only other place I can think of right off the bat that I would want to live in. While those thoughts are more in the form of useless daydreaming than firm goals, they are still useful in that they are forward-thinking instead of a clinging to former attachments.
My hopes of getting out of debt, however, are far more concrete, and they represent the one real opportunity I have to engage myself in something I desperately need to be doing. It’s also something that will make me feel better than just about anything else I could think of to be doing at the moment. My only concern is that I will have let things go so long again before I get back on track that the IRS will take matters into their own hands and structure my repayment as they see fit. I can live with that as well at this point, but my plan was to get back on track this very month. Hopefully I can almost accomplish that, if not actually.
So I may be back in Texas soon. I trust things will work out the way they should no matter what choice I make. I’ll keep you informed.
Faithfully,
Frank
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